SOMETHING SEEMS seriously out of place! We have just celebrated Thanksgiving, and according to the holiday calendar of the marketplace, Black Friday followed on its heels and Cyber Monday is coming up.

Just as the death-dealing King Antiochus did not have the last word, neither did the Roman emperor and neither do the death-dealing powers of our era. Jesus assures His disciples, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

WE ARE LIVING in troubling and violent times! On Oct. 27, a gunman entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh during Sabbath services.

I should confess to being just a bit distracted as I begin to write this column. That is because I am watching the opening innings of the first game of this year’s World Series.

This has been a difficult and heartbreaking year for our Roman Catholic Church. In fact, it has been a difficult millennium. The hurricane of scandal that has beat against the rock of the Church has left all of us shaken in heart and uncomfortable in mind.

WE OUGHT NOT to be too hard on the Apostles, or for that matter, any of the Jewish people of Jesus’ day.  A lot of what they thought about the relationship between themselves and God was based upon common sense – or so it seemed to them. 

ONE OF THE most tragic stories in the Bible is that of Solomon, who started off wise, but ended up being foolish and broken. He wasn’t born with the extraordinary wisdom for which he became famous, but rather, he asked God to give him that wisdom so that he could be, above all, a wise, just and good king for the people of Israel.

In the Gospel this weekend, the Pharisees are up to their old tricks, trying to slip Jesus up by indicating that what He’s saying is at odds with what Moses taught about marriage and divorce. Moses, it seemed, was a lot more permissive about those bills of divorce, but Jesus is drawing the line in the sand much more decisively.

WHAT EXACTLY IS Gehenna? Jesus tells us in this Sunday’s Gospel that it is a place where we do not want to go.